I had a pretty awful end-to-end experience with Pici at Central. When my friend and I (who was visiting from Australia) arrived at 8pm on Saturday night, we were told there would be a 40 minute wait. That was fine, as we knew there were no reservations. Left our phone number and then went off to get a drink. After 45 minutes and no contact from Pici, we returned to the restaurant to follow up on our table status, only to be told there were multiple tables to be seated before us and we'd have to continue waiting. They did not provide an updated time. We ended up waiting about another half hour to be seated. I'm fine with waiting as long as you can manage expectations - we ended up waiting almost twice as long as we were initially told. Not cool.
Anyway, we ended up having a delicious meal after we finally got a table, and agreed it was worth the wait. How wrong I was. After waking up the next morning, my friend and I were both violently ill, and spent the next two days stuck in my apartment taking it in turns to run to the bathroom to be sick. It was a pretty poor end to my friend's international trip.
At this point, I thought it worthwhile to contact Pici to let them know we had suffered food poisoning after eating at their restaurant. I sent a message detailing the time and day we had eaten there, as well as all the dishes we had shared, and suggesting they check their food preparation/storage. There is no doubt we were sick from eating at Pici, as this meal was the only one we shared and we both became sick at the same time.
Pici's response was to say they would investigate, and they gave me an email address I could contact. After not hearing anything further from them, I sent a follow up several days later, and received a response that they hadn't investigated further as no other customers had complained. I sent a follow up response to this stating that I knew we were sick from eating at Pici as we hadn't shared any other meals... and have not heard from them since.
I know food poisoning happens, and we did eat the burrata so it may be that the unpasteurised cheese was housing some bacteria for which Pici aren't at fault. However, the complete lack of interest expressed by Pici in this issue, failure to follow up, or provide any appropriate response or reassurance has really disappointed me. I won't be back, and I'll be recommending that people avoid this restaurant. It's a pity, as the food is truly delicious: it's just not delicious enough to be worth spending two days stuck at home feeling terrible.
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